Get iPhone 7 Plus’ Portrait Mode on Older iPhones

One of the biggest features of the recently
released iPhone 7 Plus is the portrait mode
made possible by the dual rear camera. The
camera is able to measure depth to create
stunning DSLR-quality images with bokeh
effect. While this isn’t particularly new in the
world of smartphones, Apple’s
implementation is bound to get more OEMs to
focus more attention on this feature.

Although it’s limited just to the iPhone 7 Plus,
a new app aims to bring this feature to older
iPhones. FabFocus is an app that uses
artificial intelligence to detect the human face
and body in an image so as to create a
background blur.

I’ve played around with the app over the last
few days and the learning curve isn’t steep at
all. Here is a portrait I was able to shoot with
it using an iPhone 6s Plus:

The app works though it could be better.
There are times when the automatic face
detection doesn’t work right. But then, you
can manually highlight your image in the
foreground. Double-tapping zooms in on the
image, allowing better highlight of the edges.
It also comes with a bunch of settings that lets
you fully customize the output of the image.
You may need to tweak these to fully
understand the effect they have on your
images. Here is the same image above with
the settings modified and final result modified
with the default iOS editor:

FabFocus is available in the App Store for
$1.99. It’s compatible with iPhone 5s and
newer devices.